What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.

4 out of 5 stars

Very interesting book

By
Inna Schickler
on
08-09-18

Behind the Throne

A Domestic History of the British Royal Household

By:
Adrian Tinniswood

Narrated by:
Steven Crossley

Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
1

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
1

Story

5 out of 5 stars
1

In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the listener on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire, the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands and of ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis.

Damnation Island

Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

By:
Stacy Horn

Narrated by:
Pam Ward

Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
52

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
43

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
42

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating!

By
tamborine
on
08-06-18

The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

By:
Michelle Morgan

Narrated by:
Anne Dover

Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
36

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
34

Story

4 out of 5 stars
34

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.

The Poison Squad

By:
Deborah Blum

Narrated by:
Kirsten Potter

Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
37

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
35

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
35

By the end of 19th century, food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before health. Then, In 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad".

5 out of 5 stars

I learned so much!

By
Chris Johnson
on
10-23-18

The Husband Hunters

American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy

By:
Anne de Courcy

Narrated by:
Clare Corbett

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
75

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
63

Story

4 out of 5 stars
61

Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....

5 out of 5 stars

Very interesting and well read!

By
Raven
on
09-01-18

Quackery

A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

By:
Lydia Kang,
Nate Pedersen

Narrated by:
Hillary Huber

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
85

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
75

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
75

What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.

4 out of 5 stars

Very interesting book

By
Inna Schickler
on
08-09-18

Behind the Throne

A Domestic History of the British Royal Household

By:
Adrian Tinniswood

Narrated by:
Steven Crossley

Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
1

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
1

Story

5 out of 5 stars
1

In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the listener on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire, the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands and of ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis.

Damnation Island

Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

By:
Stacy Horn

Narrated by:
Pam Ward

Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
52

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
43

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
42

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating!

By
tamborine
on
08-06-18

The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals

By:
Michelle Morgan

Narrated by:
Anne Dover

Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
36

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
34

Story

4 out of 5 stars
34

A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.

The Poison Squad

By:
Deborah Blum

Narrated by:
Kirsten Potter

Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
37

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
35

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
35

By the end of 19th century, food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before health. Then, In 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad".

5 out of 5 stars

I learned so much!

By
Chris Johnson
on
10-23-18

The Husband Hunters

American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy

By:
Anne de Courcy

Narrated by:
Clare Corbett

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
75

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
63

Story

4 out of 5 stars
61

Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....

5 out of 5 stars

Very interesting and well read!

By
Raven
on
09-01-18

The Turbulent Crown

The Story of the Tudor Queens

By:
Roland Hui

Narrated by:
Jennifer M. Dixon

Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
8

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
8

Story

5 out of 5 stars
8

Ten remarkable women. One remarkable era. In the Tudor period, 1485 to 1603, a host of fascinating women sat on the English throne. The dramatic events of their lives are told in The Turbulent Crown: The Story of the Tudor Queens.

Human Errors

A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

By:
Nathan H. Lents

Narrated by:
L.J. Ganser

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
102

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
93

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
93

We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often - 200 times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last.

5 out of 5 stars

Most interesting, well narrated

By
N.Dryl
on
05-04-18

The Anatomy of Evil

By:
Michael H. Stone MD,
Otto F. Kernberg MD

Narrated by:
Charles Constant

Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
49

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
40

Story

4 out of 5 stars
40

In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone explores the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality traits and behaviors that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines.

5 out of 5 stars

The pinnacle of true crime

By
Tommy Garou
on
07-13-18

The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

By:
Lindsey Fitzharris

Narrated by:
Ralph Lister

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,097

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,013

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,014

In
The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

5 out of 5 stars

Not one boring moment!

By
WRWF
on
12-22-17

Titans of History

The Giants Who Made Our World

By:
Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrated by:
Steve West

Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
7

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
5

Story

4 out of 5 stars
6

In this inspiring, horrifying, and accessible collection of short, entertaining, and vivid life stories, Simon Sebag Montefiore - one of our preeminent historians and a prizewinning writer - presents the giant characters who have changed the course of world history.

5 out of 5 stars

Short, but well researched.

By
brian
on
10-17-18

Dr. Mutter's Marvels

A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine

By:
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Narrated by:
Erik Singer

Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
439

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
404

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
402

Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools - or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the middle of the 19th century. Although he died at just 48, Mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time.

5 out of 5 stars

Creepy. Wonderful. Lost history.

By
Todd
on
10-08-14

Genetics in the Madhouse

The Unknown History of Human Heredity

By:
Theodore M. Porter

Narrated by:
Mike Chamberlain

Length: 14 hrs and 1 min

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
2

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
1

Story

5 out of 5 stars
1

In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They became obsessed with identifying weak or tainted families and anticipating the outcomes of their marriages.

Bellevue

Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

By:
David Oshinsky

Narrated by:
Fred Sanders

Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
654

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
590

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
586

David Oshinsky, whose last book,
Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.

5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating

By
Jean
on
12-14-16

The Private Lives of the Tudors

Uncovering the Secrets of Britain's Greatest Dynasty

By:
Tracy Borman

Narrated by:
Jonathan Keeble

Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
35

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
30

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
30

England's Tudor monarchs - Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I - are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry's quest for male heirs or Elizabeth's purported virginity, the lives of the Tudor monarchs away from the public eye remain largely beyond our grasp, mostly not chronicled by previous historians.

2 out of 5 stars

The Narration Is Awful

By
Appollo 500
on
10-27-18

Epidemics

Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS

By:
Samuel Kline Cohn Jr.

Narrated by:
David Colacci

Length: 29 hrs and 38 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
2

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
2

Story

4 out of 5 stars
2

By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the "other", and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive measures.

Sons of Cain

A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present

By:
Peter Vronsky

Narrated by:
Mikael Naramore

Length: 15 hrs and 1 min

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
46

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
41

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
41

In Sons of Cain - a book that fills the gap between dry academic studies and sensationalized true crime - investigative historian Peter Vronsky examines our understanding of serial killing from its prehistoric anthropological evolutionary dimensions in the pre-civilization era (c. 15,000 BC) to today. Delving further back into human history and deeper into the human psyche than Serial Killers - Vronsky's 2004 book, which has been called "the definitive history of the phenomenon of serial murder" - he focuses strictly on sexual serial killers.

4 out of 5 stars

Not bad

By
Donald Bouchard
on
09-12-18

Under the Knife

A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

By:
Arnold van de Laar,
Andy Brown - translator

Narrated by:
Rich Keeble

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
7

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
5

Story

5 out of 5 stars
5

From the story of the desperate man from 17th-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell, or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery?

5 out of 5 stars

Why did a surgeon need a fast horse?

By
India Clamp
on
10-18-18

Publisher's Summary

The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots.

Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings, and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. The most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don't see what lies beneath the royal robes.

In The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of Europe’s glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement, poisonous cosmetics, ever-present excrement, festering natural illness, and, sometimes, murder.